I Fought a Good Fight: A History of the Lipan Apaches

2. Early Encounters

12 In the endless, undulating spring grasses of the plains, the People could see the approach of friends and enemies. These strangers were even more obvious, sitting astride great beasts, the sun reflecting off armor and weapons. The People had heard about these men who made themselves ugly with facial hair. Any self-respecting warrior would use flints to tweeze all the hair from his face, including eyebrows and eyelashes. They knew of the beasts as well—snorting, heavy-footed animals that could bear much heavier loads than the medium-sized, shaggy dogs the People harnessed to carry their possessions when they moved camp. These creatures had terrified the Pueblo people on first sight. The People were neither frightened nor alarmed at the strangers’ approach. Their camp and its two hundred tipis housed at least a thousand people, and even though some of the men were away hunting buffalo , they were well defended. Their group and allied bands numbered in the thousands. Their enemies feared them, and the newcomers were few. These plains dwellers were called Kiraush by the Pueblos. The Spanish would call them Querechos, Vaqueros and finally Apaches. They called themselves Ndé, the People.2 2 CHAPTER Early Encounters They are men who move here and there, to wherever it seems best to them . . . — Captain Juan Jaramillo1 Early Encounters 13 “Although these [people] saw the expedition, they did not move nor did they make any commotion. Instead, they came out of their tents to look openly,” wrote Pedro de Castañeda, an expedition member . Using their hands, the people asked what the expedition was and expressed themselves so well “that it seemed as if they were talking.”3 Francisco Vasquez Coronado, the expedition leader, wrote to the king: “They do not cultivate the land, but eat raw meat and drink the blood of the cattle [bison] they kill.” Their well-constructed tents, as well as their clothing, also came from the bison. Dogs carried tents, poles, and belongings. “These people have the best physique of any I have seen in the Indies,”4 Coronado said, and Casteñeda agreed: “They have better figures, are better warriors and are more feared.”5 Furrows left by dragging tipi poles led the explorers to the Querechos in May 1541. They were near the Canadian River on the present-day New Mexico-Texas border.6 The Spaniards, unnerved and disoriented by a landscape level as a tablet from horizon to horizon, were startled to find Indian buffalo hunters7 and marveled at their use of the bison. “They dry the flesh in the sun, cutting it thin like a leaf, and when dry they grind it like meal to keep it and make a sort of sea soup of it to eat by throwing a handful into a pot and seasoning it with fat,” Castañeda wrote. For liquids they “empty a large gut and fill it with blood and carry this around the neck to drink when they are thirsty.” They also opened the bison’s stomach, squeezed out the chewed grass and drank the juice. Their tanning skills were superior. For skinning, they used a small flint, edged with their teeth and attached to a stick, as easily as an iron tool.8 The Querechos departed, but the Spaniards were still seeing their camps two days later.9 The Lipan Apache Band of Texas considers these people its ancestors , and substantial historic evidence supports that claim.10 Others refer to the Querechos as Plains Apaches, a grouping that included the ancestors of the Lipans, Mescaleros and Kiowa Apaches, or the Eastern Apaches, made up of these groups plus Jicarillas.11 14 I FOUGHT A GOOD FIGHT Continuing east for five days, Coronado and his party met the Teyas, a Caddoan group sometimes mistaken for Apaches. Coronado himself referred to the Teyas as “another sort of people” and “enemies of those that I had seen in the last settlement.”12 Archaeologists call these settlements the Tierra Blanca and Garza complexes of the Texas Panhandle-Plains. Querechos lived in the Tierra Blanca complex on the Llano Estacado (Staked Plains) north of the Red River. Teyas inhabited the Garza Complex along the upper forks of the Brazos River near present Lubbock. The two groups didn’t mix.13 From stories about Teyas or Querechos attacking pueblos sixteen yearsearlier,theSpaniardsassumed,asdidarchaeologistsuntilrecently, that those events heralded the arrival of the Apaches on the plains...